Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/61

Rh our guards and we have sunk (I believe) not less than ten times as many submarines as the enemy had at the beginning of the war. We have built ships to make our navy at least half as strong again as it was before the war. We have caused to be made and transported 25,000,000 tons of shells, and we have conveyed to and from different parts of the globe, as soldiers going and coming, well, sick or wounded, some 13,000,000 men. Our policing of the sea has been so done that we have lost by enemy action 2,700 of these 13,000,000 travelling soldiers.

Then in money, we have spent on this war five billion five hundred million dollars, of which rather more than one-fifth has been loaned or given to our Allies.

People sometimes say a fourth lie about us:—that we are a grasping people who will profit by this war.

Let me say this, that no one will profit from this war. We in Europe will be beggared by it for years to come; only we want the world to profit by it, by a change of heart, by an understanding among the nations, and by the knowledge which we in Europe needed this war to teach us, that human life is the precious thing